Changes
by cwgirlup
Summary: Iraq changed a lot of things.


Title: Changes  
Author: cwgirlup75  
Rating: T (for one male/male kiss)  
Pairing: Zack/Hodgins  
Word count: 2515  
Summary: Iraq changed lots of things.  
A/N: This story was meant to be a short vingette about how Zack changed after Iraq. About 300 words in, the boys threw me a hard right and we ended up here.

Changes

Zack never thought it would be so hard. Oh, he knew Iraq would be a difficult situation. He knew that a war zone would most likely be nothing less than horrible. He had not, however, been prepared for how challenging it would be to readjust once he returned to the lab.

Everyone had welcomed him back with open arms. Dr. Brennan had taken the whole group out to dinner his first night back, and as they all joked and laughed at the diner, Zack truly felt like he had come home. After dinner, everyone went their separate ways, and Hodgins drove him home. They pulled into the garage, and he headed upstairs to sleep in his own bed for the first time in three months. To his surprise, Hodgins followed him upstairs.

"I thought we could watch a little Firefly before I go to the house. You know, a little guy time to reconnect."

Zack smiled. "I would enjoy that, Hodgins."

They relaxed on Zack's couch and watched TV. Hodgins fell asleep about three episodes in, and Zack followed shortly after. He awoke around 7:00 am with a crick in his neck and what felt suspiciously like saliva on his arm. He looked over and saw Hodgins propped against his right arm, drooling and snoring. Despite the stiffness in his neck, he leaned his head back and sighed. He couldn't remember the last time he slept so well.

The next few days followed much the same pattern. His days were busy with work, his nights were filled with socializing with his friends and catching up with Hodgins. Zack thought, rather smugly, that he had adjusted well.

Three days later, it all went to hell.

Zack woke up screaming. He pulled himself out of his dream, sitting bolt upright on his couch and clutching a blanket. He tried to calm his breathing and his racing heart as it sank in that he was alone. Hodgins must have gone back to his house at some point after Zack fell asleep. He squashed his dismay at that realization and reached for the TV remote. He wouldn't be sleeping anymore that night.

Zack was waiting by the car when Hodgins walked into the garage at 8:00 am.

"Ready for another day at work, man? I think I can talk Cam into letting us do that experiment we talked about yesterday."

Zack climbed into the car wordlessly and leaned his head against the window as Hodgins drove down the road, describing in detail how he planned to get their boss to agree with him. When they got close to the lab, he looked over at Zack curiously.

"Are you ok, dude? You haven't said a word all morning."

"I'm just tired. I did not sleep well last night."

"Really? You looked like you were out for the count when I left. I couldn't even get you to wake up long enough to get you into the bedroom, so I just covered you up on the couch."

"Yes, I......woke up early this morning and could not get back to sleep." Zack couldn't bring himself to admit that he had a nightmare.

"Sorry to hear that, man. I'm sure you'll be fine tonight."

"Yes. I'm sure, also."

That night was not fine. Neither was the next night, nor the night after that. The nightmares grew worse every night, and it took Zack longer to shake the images each night. Finally, after two weeks of constant nightmares, Zack was afraid to go to sleep at all. His work was beginning to suffer, and no one knew quite how to approach him about it. He felt on edge all the time and was extremely irritable.

It all came to a head the day he fell asleep in his office. That, in itself, wasn't all that unusual. They all worked long hours and from time to time, someone would take a short nap to refresh. The difference came when Angela attempted to wake him up. She walked into his office and called his name.

"Wakey, wakey, sleepyhead," she said, clapping her hands near his ear.

Zack jerked up violently, his eyes wide and glassy. He didn't see Angela or his office. His head was full of images of Iraq, pulling bodies out of mass graves while bullets flew overhead. Angela laid a hand on his shoulder, and he jumped out of his chair, knocking her to the floor. He ran to a corner of his office and sat huddled, his arms curled around his knees, his breath coming in quick gasps.

Angela crossed to Zack and tried to talk to him.

"Zack? Zack?!" When he didn't answer, she ran out of his office and to the platform where Brennan, Booth, and Hodgins stood talking about their latest case. She swiped her card and dashed up the stairs.

"Hey! Guys! Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but we have a _big _problem. Huge. In Zack's office."

The three exchanged a look and hurried to follow Angela. Zack was still in the same position, unseeing eyes staring straight ahead. Booth was the first to speak.

"Oh, God."

"What is it? What's wrong with him?"

"Flashback, Bones. From the looks of it, probably not the first he's had."

"He's catatonic, Booth. You mean, he's been like this before?"

"It's probably never been this bad before, Bones. Hodgins, have you seen him like this before?"

"N-No. But I haven't been spending too much time with him outside of work lately." He and Angela shared a guilty look. "I've had....stuff."

"Ok, look. What's important now is getting Zack to come back to the here and now, but we have to do it as calmly as possible. Hodgins, you're his best friend. I want you to talk to him quietly and get him to connect with you. The rest of us will wait outside." Angela opened her mouth to protest, and Booth held up a hand to stop her. "It's best if it's just the two of them for now. Trust me, I've dealt with flashbacks before."

Angela, Brennan, and Booth walked outside and left Hodgins alone with Zack. He slowly approached Zack, unsure of how exactly to address him. He thought about it for a moment and decided to just go with instinct.

"Zack. Hey, buddy. It's me, Hodgins. Or Jack. You know, whatever you want to call me. So.....um, I'm not really sure what to do here, but Booth said said that talking to you would help you come back to us. We all really want that, buddy. I mean, Cam is still walking the warpath just because I accidentally let that shipment of Pholcus phalangiodes loose in the lab, and I sure don't want to deal with her by myself. I mean, I got them all cleaned up, right?"

There was no response from Zack, not even a flicker of change in his expression. Hodgins sighed and sat on the floor in front of Zack.

"Look, Zack. I'm sorry that I haven't spent much time with you lately. I've just been going through some stuff with Angie. Everyone else will know before long, but we've decided to call it off. Us, I mean. We're not going to be seeing each other anymore. Everything just sort of imploded when I found out she was already married, you know? And then you left right after that all happened, and I just felt like everything was falling down around me. I started drinking more and more, always at night and I never came to work drunk, but it still wasn't good. And then Angie and I started getting into really bad fights, just yelling and screaming at each other. We even tried couples therapy for awhile. Then you came back, and I thought maybe things would be ok with Angie and I. But they weren't. All I wanted to do was hang out with you, and it made her mad because I didn't spend any time with her. So I tried spending time with her, but the more I did, the more I realized that I wasn't where I wanted to be. And I'm really mad at myself, because if I hadn't been trying to make her happy, maybe I would have seen what you were going through before it got this far." Hodgins paused and laid a hand on Zack's knee. "I promise, though, whatever else happens, I'll be here for you."

Zack's breathing had slowed to a steady rate while Hodgins was talking. He looked at Hodgins with tired eyes and said, "No, you won't. You'll go back to Angela, and I'll be alone again."

He looked down at his hands for a moment, gathering his thought before he spoke.

"It was so much worse over there than I thought it would be. The conditions were primitive, at best. The second day I was there, I saw a girl no older than my youngest sister get shot less than twenty meters from where we were. Within a week, I was pulling bodies out of mass graves, trying to make identifications based on almost nothing. It was no better when things were slow. I had no one to talk to – the other soldiers shunned me openly and mocked me behind my back. I was finally sent home for failing to assimilate. Obviously, I shouldn't have gone in the first place."

"Then why did you, Zack? Why did you just leave?"

"I left because no one wanted me here."

"Of course we did. We all wanted you here. _I _wanted you here."

"No, you didn't, Hodgins. Once you and Angela got together, I was practically forgotten. We never spent time together outside work. I hardly even saw you at work, for that matter. You were always sneaking off to the Egyptian Storage room with Angela, or making out in her office. I just couldn't handle it anymore, especially once you announced that you were getting married."

"I'm sorry that I made you feel like that,Zack. But I still can't believe that you'd go off to war just because you felt left out."

"I didn't leave because I felt left out."

Zack stood for the first time and walked around the office quietly. After a few moments of silence, Hodgins spoke.

"Then I don't get it. Why did you go?"

Zack looked at him, trying to gauge the sincerity of the question.

"I.......care for you, Hodgins. A great deal. Seeing you with Angela caused me to experience strong emotions that I was unsure how to handle. I did some research on the subject of emotions and deduced that what I was feeling was jealousy. I decided the best way to deal with my feelings was to remove myself from the situation."

Hodgins stared at Zack in disbelief.

"Let me get this straight. You decided to go to Iraq, to head into a _war zone_, just because you were _jealous_?" Hodgins struggled to keep his voice even as he felt the anger overtaking him. "Do you have any idea how screwed-up that is, Zack? You were so jealous of me because I had Angela and you didn't that you couldn't even be around me?"

"Listen to me, Hodgins, please. I wasn't jealous of you having Angela. I don't want Angela. I was jealous of _her _having _you._"

Hodgins stood frozen in place, stunned into silence as the realization took hold.

"Do you understand now? You're my best friend, the only real friend I've had. I couldn't ruin that by telling you, and I didn't think I could stand watching you and Angela much longer. I thought surely if I went away and had something else to focus on, my feelings would go away. It didn't work the way I wanted it to, however."

"You mean..."

"My feelings for you remain the same. I know you don't feel the same, and I don't expect that. I just hope that we can still be friends despite this."

"Zack, we'll always be friends. Nothing could change that. I just.....I've realized something over the past couple weeks. I missed you so much when you were gone. I felt like there was a hole inside of me. For a long time, I blamed it on being blindsided with the Fiji wedding thing, but that wasn't it. I wasn't drinking to forget how upset I was about Angie, I was drinking to forget how completely terrified I was. I spent every day _sure_ that Cam was going to tell us all that she got a call saying you were missing or dead, and the alcohol helped to dull that. When we saw you that day in the lab, standing there with that ugly duffle slung over your shoulder, it was like I could breathe for the first time in months. All I wanted to do was spend time with you. And then Angie started giving me grief for not making time for her, so I decided to spend some evenings with her. Funny thing is, she's the one who pointed out how much I talked about you when I was with her." Hodgins shrugged. "I figured out that you were always on my mind because I wanted to be with you, not her. I just wish I had figured this out a year ago. I could have saved us both a lot of suffering."

"What are you saying, Hodgins?"

Hodgins moved closer, looking Zack in the eye as he spoke.

"I'm saying that I like you, Zack. A lot. I'm not saying I'm ready to buy matching cardigans or set up house with three cats, but I'd like to see where this might take us. You know, take things slow and just see what happens."

Hodgins stepped closer, watching Zack's body language for any sign of tension as he moved into his personal space. He stroked his fingers along Zack's cheek, smiling as he leaned into the touch.

"How does that sound, Zack?"

"That sounds....wonderful."

Hodgins smiled. "Good." He put a hand on Zack's elbow, pulling him a bit closer. "We have a lot to talk about, starting with finding a counselor for you. But before we do any of that, I want to do something I've been thinking about for awhile." He slid his hand from Zack's cheek to the back of his neck. He tugged slightly, and their eyes slid closed as their lips met for the first time. The kiss was soft and sweet and full of promises of the things to come.

Zack sighed as they parted and rested his forehead against Hodgins' forehead. Suddenly, things didn't seem quite so hard.

THE END


End file.
